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Since 2001, Duda Penteado has been considering the consequences of September 11, 2001, in the face of the increasing globalization developing since the 1980s. Beauty for Ashes represents his re-consideration of some of the key elements of this topic, six years later. For this exhibit, held in the Project Gallery, the artist worked for three weeks on a colossal wall drawing for the longest walls in the exhibition space. Articles, notes, images, preparatory sketches, personal logs and drawings that were critical to the creation of the final piece will be included in the show.

A resident of Jersey City, Brazilian artist Penteado works in what has been called “the modern tradition of the arts of Brazil.” In addition to painting, Penteado’s artistic productions include printmaking and sculpture made from found objects. He modeled his own reaction to 9/11 on Picasso’s Guernica, which was Picasso’s reaction to the bombing of a Spanish Village during the Spanish Civil War.

Jersey City Museum
350 Montgomery St
Jersey City, NJ 07302
Telephone: (201) 413-0303
Web site:www.jerseycitymuseum.org

Rafael Montañez Ortíz
Archaeological Find #3, 1961
Burned mattress destruction on wooden backing
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Gift of Constance Kane, 1963

Raphael Montañez Ortíz wrote his first Destructivism manifesto in 1962. Subsequently, three themes have pervaded his works throughout his career: dualities, transcendence and ritual.

Born in New York in 1953, Ortiz made his mark in the art world in the late 1950s as one of the central figures in destructivism, an international reaction to the social detachment of the postwar avant-garde. In 1969, Ortiz co-founded El Museo del Barrio, the first Latino art museum in the U.S. His works include painting, sculpture, installation, film and performance. Although he and his works were prominent through the 1960s, after that his activities became obscured by other movements.

This retrospective includes works from 1970s to the present and redresses the artist’s continued relevance to art history and for the twenty-first century.

Jersey City Museum
80 Grand St.
Jersey City, NJ 07302
Telephone: (201) 332-5200
Web site: www.jerseycitymuseum.org

Louis H. Sullivan. Plate 14: Fantasy, a Study of Curves in Three Dimensions from A System of Architectural Ornament, According with a Philosohpy of Man’s Powers, 1922–23. Commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago.

For the 150th anniversary of Louis Sullivan’s (1856-1924) birth, the Art Institute of Chicago is highlighting the architect’s A System of Architectural Ornament, which was commissioned by the institute’s Burnham Library of Architecture and produced by the architect in 1922 and 1923.

Sullivan studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later developed his indelible architectural style based on a commitment to reconciling nature with science and technology.
The drawings on view offer a window onto Sullivan’s interpretation of the philosophical principles of ornament and its relationship to architecture and the natural world. Ornament, Sullivan believed, was a link between natural forms and the practical and rational aspects of building design.

Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL
Telephone: (312) 443-3600
Web site: www.artic.edu

Salvador Dalí and Edward James
Mae West Lips Sofa, 1938
Wood carcass, upholstered in satin
86.5 x 183 x 81.5 cm.
The Trustees of The Edward James Foundation
Copyright © Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, DACS, London 2007

Surrealist imagery, conjured from dreams, continues to be a deep source of inspiration. This exhibit includes 300 works that explore the impact of surrealism on fashion, interior design, architecture, theater, film, graphic art and advertisng.

From the expected (paintings by Magritte, Dali and Ernst) to the surprising (Elsa Schiaparelli’s “Skeleton dress,” Meret Oppenheim’s “Table with Bird’s Legs” and Oscar Dominguez’s satin-lined wheelbarrow), this show offers a more direct view into how the vast world of the unconscious manifests in artistic creation. Other highlights of the show are the dream sequence from Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound, and a case study of Monkton, the purple-painted Sussex home of the English Surrealist patron Edward James.

Victoria & Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
London, England
Telephone: (44) 020 7942 2000
Web site: www.vam.ac.uk

Two winter blackbirds; mixed media on canvas 30 x 40cm

Elaine Pamphilon’s work is reverent and whimsical, dreamlike and rooted in the touching and tangible details of daily life. Gently colored and strangely alluring, the works have a childlike quality. Like fond memories, they make one feel connected to a special experience.

From landscapes and seascapes to still lifes, Pamphilon’s images tell the story of her own intimate connection to place. A painter and harpist, she lives in a house cum studio in St. Ives. Her paintings chronicle a life led on a hill, in a house by the sea with distant views of boats; filled with flowers, pebbles and shells, treasured cups, mugs and bowls.

Pamphilon works in acrylic and watercolor on canvas, board and paper, using mixed media to create interesting effects with line and texture. She began painting in in the mid 1980s, studying at Homerton College, Cambridge, under Kay Melzi.

Godfrey & Watt
7-8 Westminster Arcade
Parliament Street, Harrogate
North Yorkshire, England
Telephone: (44) 01423 525 300
Web site: www.godfreyandwatt.co.uk

Betsabeé Romero, Historias radiales I, 2007

Throughout her career, Mexican artist Betsabeé Romero has worked within traditional genres and used handcrafting techniques from her native Mexico along with iconography from cultures ranging from Indian, Islamic, and the pre-Columbian. These elements have formed Romero’s artistic vocabulary and provided an effective language for commenting on contemporary Western culture.

The works in Sheltered Shadows reflect on the global community today, the rapidity within which information circulates and blends, and the loosening of long-cherished ideals and traditions in cultures and relationships.

Mixing the automobile parts that have become central to her vision with such diverse media as parking lot security mirrors, video and the traditional Mexican craft of “papel picado,” Romero makes works that address many of the most urgent contemporary issues. For example, one installation in the show consists of parking lot security mirrors that have been sandblasted with an Islamic design in black and gold and on which a video of U.S. President George Bush’s last official visit to Latin American countries is projected.

In Betsabeé’s words, Sheltered Shadows is meant to provide the viewer with “drawings where graphite lines become veins through which only our vision can run, structures made of shadows and reflections that only manifest themselves to he who is willing to travel through them.”

Born in Mexico City in 1963, Romero has exhibited extensively throughout the U.S., Latin America and Europe. Her most recent exhibitions include solo shows at Voges+Partner in Frankfurt, La Refaccionaria in Mexico City and an installation at the Centro Cultural de España in Mexico City. Recently, she won First Prize at the Cairo Biennial. She currently lives and works in Mexico City.

Opening reception: Thursday, March 29, 6–8 p.m.

Galeria Ramis Barquet
532 West 24 St.
New York, NY 10011
Telephone: (212) 675-3421
Web site: www.ramisbarquet.com

Directed by Philip Gröning

(Germany, 2006) In French and Latin with subtitles

Reviewed by Jim Pratzon

While creating Into Great Silence, a documentary on the Carthusian monks of the Cloister of the Grande Chartreuse, Philip Gröning was seduced by his subject. Nothing less could explain the way his camera so comfortably and intimately connects with the rituals and routines of this Catholic monastery. Only an eye guided by compassion could so deftly avoid the surface eccentricities of these monks’ lifestyles and focus on the heart of their practice. His film is a labor of the greatest love, the kind that requires not only faith but active discourse and understanding. (more…)

Sylvia Sleigh, Arakawa & Madeline Gins, 1971

Throughout her long career, feminist realist painter Sylvia Sleigh has been creating blunt, intricately observed images. Born in 1916 in Wales, Sleigh studied painting from 1934 to 1937 at the Brighton School of Art and had her first exhibition in the U.K. in 1954 at the Kensington Gallery in London.

In 1961, Sleigh and her husband, art critic Lawrence Alloway, emigrated to the U.S., where she began to blaze a trail in the feminist art movement. Sleigh arrived in New York as a figurative painter at a time when abstract expressionism, minimalism and pop art cast large shadows over other styles. In the 1970s, she became known for creating a new type of “feminist painting” with her male odalisques.

Sleigh’s work is direct and unrepentant, libidinous and indulgent. Her paintings of friends, allegorical scenes and nudes are unselfconscious and spontaneous but at the same time, obsessive. In particular, Sleigh makes a fetish of body hair.

The works in this exhibition were made between 1963 and 2007.

Opening reception: Thursday, March 29, 6-8 p.m.

I-20
557 West 23rd St.
New York, NY 10011
Telephone: (212) 645-1100
Web site: www.i-20.com

President Hugo Chavez, New York City, September 21, 2006

Born in 1957 in Leicester, Steve Pyke is one of Britain’s most prominent photographers. He left home at age 16 and supported himself as a textile worker. Influenced by the renegade music scene that was born in the mid 1970s, Pike went on to make his mark as a photographer for Nick Logan’s influential “fashion bible,” The Face.

Pyke’s now-signature portrait photography has showcased people from all backgrounds and economic classes: the homeless, power brokers and philosophers among them. Shot in black and white and often closely cropped, each of Pyke’s photographs demonstrates a portrait style that intimately explores the subject’s face.

Shown in this solo exhibition at Flowers are new and recent images of figures in art, politics, fashion and music.

Currently, Pyke is a staff photographer for The New Yorker. He was awarded the 2006 Royal Photographic Society Award and was named an M.B.E. in the 2003 Queen’s Birthday Honors list. Pyke’s work is held in permanent collections, including the National Portrait Gallery and Imperial War Museum in London, and the New York Public Library.

A catalogue has been published to accompany the exhibition.

Opening reception: Thursday, March 29, 6 – 8 p.m.

Flowers
1000 Madison Avenue
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10021
Telephone: (212) 439-1700
Web site: www.flowerseast.com

“Seegun!” is an exhibition of gun sculptures by Mexican artist Goethe David Pontón García. A slide show of works is available at www.leac.com.mx

The artist is known for his daring and confident use of controversial imagery to provoke consciousness of political and social realities.

La Estación Arte Contemporáneo
C. Aldama 1002
Centro Chihuahua
Chihuahua, Mexico
Telephone: (52) 614 410 7216
Web site: www.leac.com.mx